


the stars miss the sun

by flowermasters



Category: Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Fluff and Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Snapshots, Teenagers, che graduates from puppy love to the real thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 16:38:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15733329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: Che figures some things out one summer. At least, sort of.





	the stars miss the sun

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write about them in a fic that's not super adult/set in prison but I'm still avoiding actual s2 canon like the plague. The title of this comes (rather coincidentally) from "Summertime Sadness" by Lana del Rey. Also coincidentally, this is my 100th fic posted to AO3. :-)
> 
> Warnings for: pre-canon, pre-relationship, teenfic; heavy references to canon-typical violence, some mild references to internalized homophobia, references to incarceration.
> 
> Feedback is greatly appreciated!

They never agreed on a time, but Shades is late. Comanche waits on the corner, his gaze fixed down the street, sucking his teeth when some lady bumps him with her bag as she passes. Then, quick as a flash, a hand reaches up under the arm that’s held up to grip the strap of his backpack and something prods him in the ribs. “Surprise.”

Che turns, but he knows it’s Shades from the voice in his ear, the gentle gust of an exhale against his neck. “The hell was that?” Che says, glancing down at his shirtfront. “If you ripped my shirt, I’m going to kill you. Then my moms is going to kill me.”

“Relax,” Shades says, flashing the handle of his pocket knife, the blade folded away. “But remember your peripherals next time.”

“That some new shit you on?” Che says, and Shades laughs. “I haven’t heard of it.”

“Come on,” Shades says. “We’re gonna be late.”

Summer school’s lame as fuck, but at least it’s only a couple hours a day. They’d both skipped almost to the point of truancy during the school year, but first and last period took the biggest hits, so now they’re stuck repeating algebra and PE. Somehow algebra sounds more promising than walking laps around the unairconditioned gym.

“What were you doing, anyway?” Che asks, falling into step with Shades. “Waiting till you got a chance to sneak up on me?”

“Like I’d have to wait,” Shades says, gaze forward, eyes hidden except from the side, where Che can glimpse them over the arm of his sunglasses. “I came from Enrique’s.”

So, the other direction; Che hadn’t seen him coming because he’d been facing the way Shades usually came from. Che absorbs this information for a beat. “Your mom left?”

Shades nods. “Yesterday,” he says, briskly. “So I’m at Enrique’s till whenever.”

Shades used to call Enrique _my tío_ , but now he calls him Enrique, like they’re both grown. Shades doesn’t do that to his face, of course; he probably doesn’t call him anything to his face, really. He’s been on his uncle’s couch before, but never with the expectation of staying there for long.

Che watches Shades’s face as they walk. They haven’t really talked about this. It seems like one week Shades said _my abuela’s sick_ and the next _my mom is going home_ and now what he’s not saying at all, which is _my mother is gone_. The thing is, Che knows what Shades is probably thinking: his mother’s never really been _around_ even when she was _here_ , always working or sleeping or somewhere in between, and if she’s gone now then so what. But what Shades is probably thinking is different from what Shades is probably feeling, which is harder to gauge based only on a glimpse of his eyes, the simple flutter of lashes as he blinks.

“If that doesn’t work out,” Che says finally, “you know I got you.”

Shades huffs. “Yeah, right,” he says, still looking straight ahead. “Your mom’s discipline is too much for me. She’s still got you walking funny after she found out about summer school.”

Che laughs, but it’s fleeting. They’re nearly there, and already running late: he needs to make sure Shades knows this, and fast. “I’m for real,” he says, slowing to a halt. “You always got a spot with me. You know that, right?”

Shades pulls a couple steps ahead, clearly not prepared to stop, but then, almost automatically, doubles back for Che. He’s looking at Che now, his eyes blocked by his lenses. “Yeah,” Shades says. “’Course I do.”

Che nods, then starts walking again, and they don’t say anything else after that. As they turn the last corner, walking a little faster now, Shades bumps his shoulder against Che’s. They’re both still grinning when they hit the front doors, a measly two minutes late.

He thinks about it all through algebra—Shades living with him, that is. His mother wouldn’t be too happy about it, although of course Shades would sleep in Che’s room and keep his comings and goings quiet, which he already does when Che lets him in and out at all hours of the night via the fire escape. Shades has been adept at taking care of himself for as long as Che’s known him; he’s resourceful above all else. He’d only really need a place to rest his head, but he’d have Che.

In two years they’ll be grown, anyways, and then they can live together while they hustle. Somehow even in that future Che still thinks of them as sharing a room, maybe because his best frame of reference is the childhood sleepovers when they shared a bed, piled in on each other like puppies. Now when Shades stays the night he sleeps on blankets on the floor, although sometimes he dozes off in Che’s bed and doesn’t wake till dawn, when Che is still asleep. Sometimes Che wakes to the feeling of Shades clambering off the mattress, but sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes they wake at the same time, yawning and stretching, too drowsy to bother ribbing each other over who fell asleep first.

He’s pulled from the idea of waking up next to Shades by Mrs. Johnson’s voice, asking Darius to please come up to the front. He hasn’t been paying attention to jack shit for the past twenty minutes and does a clumsy job of solving the equation on the board. When he turns to walk back to his seat, Shades is grinning at him, but his expression is as fond as it is smug, so Che doesn’t take much offense. He remembers what that grin looks like in the mornings, wide and slow in blue-yellow light, and that carries him through. 

* * *

The trip to Coney Island is his mother’s idea, after a June heatwave keeps Shades and Che inside for a few days, lounging and complaining, only hitting the streets at dusk. She treats them both to train fare, on one condition: no funny business. She still hasn’t forgotten about those damn hotdogs.

There’s not much for them to get into at Coney Island besides funny business, since neither of them have enough money to do anything besides roam around. They flirt with some girls on the boardwalk for a while, till those girls figure out they’re only sixteen—well, Che technically still isn’t, and Shades barely is, but it doesn’t matter. Then Shades says, “We’ll have better luck on the beach. They’ll be half-naked there.”

“You don’t have a suit,” Che points out. “Unless you wanna fool around on the beach in jeans.”

Shades raises his eyebrows over the brim of his sunglasses, all _who do you take me for?_ , and Che just laughs.

This routine of theirs is so practiced as to be almost a little boring after all this time: Che knocks over a rack of sunglasses out front of a shop while Shades slips in and out unnoticed. One stop at a changing room later and nobody would ever know Shades hadn’t come by those swim trunks honestly.

The trunks are red, bright in a way Shades would generally avoid if he had the advantages of time and money. Che finds himself oddly aware of the color, and the shorts in general, as they mill about on the beach for a while, the rest of their clothes stuffed into a locker that Che coughed up a few dollars to rent for a couple hours. He’s seen Shades half-dressed before, and undressed, but this is a rarity: Shades happy, half-naked, in red shorts. His skin must be warm from the sun; at least, what comes to mind when Che looks askance over Shades’s shoulders, his neck, the hollows at his collarbones, is warmth.

“It’s _hot_ ,” Che says, “and no girls are worrying about us. Let’s get in the water.”

Shades sighs loudly and pointedly, but he turns toward the water. They wade in up to their waists, then their chests, till Shades digs his heels in, somewhat literally.

“What, you scared?” Che says, sloshing some water at him. He knows this is not true, of course; Shades is a good swimmer, has known how to swim for probably almost as long as he’s known how to walk, but this is what they do: mess with each other, crack jokes. It’s easier than treading water, sometimes easier than breathing.

Shades avoids getting splashed in the face by jerking his head back, the movement somehow smooth; he’s got a knack for that. He wrinkles his nose, but his mouth is thin, like he’s trying not to smile. “Knock that baby shit off.”

Che rolls his eyes, bends his knees so he’s lower in the water, and lets Shades think he’s lost interest. The next splash is stronger, catching Shades full in the face. He grimaces, then reaches up to take off his glasses, like he’s somehow going to wipe all the water droplets off the lenses. But instead he folds his glasses neatly into his palm and looks at Che, dead on and a little scary, and Che doesn’t have time to do more than gawk before Shades tackles him.

They both go down, though their heads are only underwater for a couple seconds before Che gets his feet back under him and stands, hauling Shades up by the death grip they have on one another. Shades has a handicap, one of his hands useless because he won’t let go of those damn sunglasses for anything, but that doesn’t seem to bother him much. He just uses his empty hand to grab Che by the back of the neck, doing his level best to drown them both as Che fends him off with both hands. Shades is grinning, big and wide, and Che grins too, even as they fall under again.

They screw around like that for a while, until they’re both worn out from fighting the waves and the crowd, although not so much from each other. Sticky and sandy and tired, Che dozes on the train; even though his sleep is thin, he somehow still dreams, or maybe just remembers. Flashes of red shorts, the bristle of short hair at the nape of Shades’s neck under his palm, and the way it felt to press their chests together in the water. He wakes too warm in his clothes and dizzy, cottonmouthed with thirst.

It takes him a couple seconds to figure out why he’d woken up, but then Shades nudges him again, harder than he had the first time. “Wake up,” he says. “It’s time to go.”

Che lifts his head from where it’s drooped down towards his chest; all he can think to do is give Shades a slightly dopey smile, feeling vaguely apologetic for more than just knocking out on the train. Shades huffs, exasperated, but he doesn’t complain. He just stands, but he pauses for a second to let Che get his bearings, and then he leads the way home.

* * *

The bullet tracks a searing path across his upper arm, and Che grunts, loud and choked, more instinct than actual reaction. Ahead of him, Shades stumbles, head turning, and Comanche nearly bowls him over. “Go,” he says, “fucking go,” and pushes Shades onward.

They don’t stop running until they hit the front stoop of Che’s building, and even then their feet thud up the stairs loud enough to raise the dead. That’s really the only thing he can hear, that and the pull and heave of his own breathing, but he still _feels_ the squeal of tires and the crackle of gunfire, even if it’s already over.

Adrenaline keeps him going long enough to fumble in his pants pocket for his housekey, which he shoves into the lock on the first try in a stroke of blind luck, possibly the same blind luck that made that bullet miss something important, like his chest or the vulnerable back of his head. Then Shades pushes the door open, and the swing and sudden open darkness makes it all hit Che in a wave, a swirling mixture of lightheadedness and pain and Shades’s face, turning back to look at him.

He’s aware of stumbling down the short front hallway to get to the kitchen, uncaring and in fact hardly aware of the noise he’s making, though it’s not till later that he remembers to thank the same dumb luck that his mother is working the night shift this week. He just needs to sit down, rest a minute, and then figure his shit out, that’s all.

He’s still focusing on breathing when there’s another sudden, searing pain in his arm, and he lurches blindly, kicking a leg of the kitchen table and almost knocking Shades’s block off. “The fuck?” he says, blinking in the wan light from the fixture over the sink, taking in Shades squatting on the floor next to him.

“I’m disinfecting,” Shades says. He’s holding the half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol from the medicine cabinet. Judging by the smell of things and the persistent sting in the wound, he’s just dumped most of the contents onto Che’s arm.

Che boggles at him. “Give a brother some warning, then!” he says. “Goddamn. I just got shot.”

Shades pauses. “You didn’t get shot,” he says. “You got grazed.”

There’s a beat of silence while they just stare at one another, processing the stupid and yet vastly important distinction between the two, and then Shades huffs. Then suddenly he’s outright laughing, the high-pitched hyena cackle he only makes when some shit is really, really funny or when it really, really isn’t. At first Che laughs too, startled and relieved, and then he stops, watching as Shades drops to sit on his knees and keeps laughing, one hand now over his face. There’s blood on his hand, Che realizes, and now on the bridge of his nose, his brow.

“Hey,” Che says. “You ain’t hit, are you?”

“No,” Shades says, trying to regain his breath, blinking back tears as he kneels on the floor. He sees where Che is looking, at his hands, and says, “That’s yours.”

“Got some on your face,” Che says, licking a thumb and reaching out first to rub hard over Shades’s left eyebrow, then quickly over his nose and gently over his cheekbone.

To his surprise, Shades permits this, although after a couple seconds he bats the hand away and turns his attention back to Che’s arm. “You’re dripping blood everywhere,” he says. “Let me wrap it.”

The roll of gauze his mother keeps in the cabinet is nearly used up, so Shades wraps it as thick as he can and then Che takes off his shirt and the black wifebeater underneath, which he uses to knot around his upper arm. The hurt is a persistent, dull ache now, but at least it’s not his dominant arm, and at least he’s not dead.

Shades comes back from the bathroom again, this time holding the bottle of bleach cleaner from under the sink. “Come on,” he says. “The blood’ll stain the linoleum.”

Che doesn’t ask how Shades knows this, and he doesn’t even groan about having to clean with a bum arm. Instead he finds them each a rag and they wipe down the floor, then the table, till there’s no trace of red and they’re both lightheaded from the fumes. After they wash their hands at the sink, Che sits at the table again while Shades reaches into a cabinet like he pays rent and withdraws two cups of noodles. “Janis won’t mind, you think?” he asks. “We did just clean the floor.”

Che smiles, rolls his eyes. They need to find out what’s happening in the streets, figure out who’s dead and who’s dying next, and Shades needs to be out of here before Che’s mom gets home, so Che can weather the storm of her horror and relief alone. She’ll be furious at him for hanging around with those older boys at all hours until she remembers how much worse it could be, and then he’ll be her baby boy again. But right now, there’s not much else they can do but sit at the kitchen table and eat their noodles, just to put their shaking hands to a task.

Shades has his glasses tucked haphazardly at the collar of his t-shirt, where they’ll be easy to reach when he slips back out into the night to nose around at the corner. His shoulders are drawn up slightly, and one of his hands ferries his fork mechanically back and forth while the other rests useless and half-clenched on the tabletop. Che reaches out with his bad arm, unprompted, and brushes his fingers over Shades’s knuckles, though all the blood is gone now. He knows he’s the only person Shades would ever turn back like that for, without even thinking, and that it must have scared Shades, both to think that Che had been hit and to feel himself falter like that, trip up because he'd risk death before he’d let Che die.

Shades doesn’t say anything, but he nods, just once, blinking at the tabletop like he can’t look up yet. Che keeps his hand there, just resting, until he does.

* * *

His birthday falls on a Saturday that year, which is cool, even if it is summer. His mother has him down the block half the day visiting his grandmother and aunts, which is less cool, but she turns him loose at dinnertime. Shades, predictably, shows up not long after, bearing a gift in the form of a bag of Chinese takeout from Che’s favorite spot.

“How did you score that?” Che asks, after calling goodbye to his mother and shutting the door behind them. Once again, they’re leaving the apartment with strict instructions not to act a fool, instructions they will ignore at the first opportunity.

“I bought it,” Shades says, putting his glasses back on as they head down the stairs. “Finally got the combination to Enrique’s safe down.”

They make their way out into the small, grassy space behind Che’s building. Someone busted open a fire hydrant a few buildings down, so no kids are hanging around here this evening. It’s a good enough place to chill if you don’t want anybody bugging you.

“How much did you take?” Che asks. Shades has been on a mission this summer trying to crack that safe; when that proved to be too skilled a job, he just kept peeking over his uncle’s shoulder trying to glimpse the combination.

“Couple twenties, for now,” Shades says. “So if he asks about it I can say his girlfriend must’ve taken it. But that’s not even the best part.”

Shades reaches into the bag and withdraws a plastic bottle, which is filled with something Che highly doubts is water. “Tequila,” he says, handing it to Che. “And _my_ favorite part.”

Shades lifts the hem of his shirt, and Che glances down reflexively only to find a gun tucked in the waistband of Shades’s jeans. “Damn,” Che says, as Shades grins and drops his shirt back down. “You think that’s a good idea?”

Shades waves a hand. “Relax. I’ll put it back before he notices. Anyway, it’s safer for us to have it, streets hot like they are.”

Che thinks about arguing. He’s only met Shades’s uncle a couple times, doesn’t know a whole lot about him, but that’s the only blood Shades has left here, at least for now. Shades’s mother, his grandparents, even his piece of shit father are all miles and miles away. But he also knows that this, in and of itself, is why Shades is still treating Enrique’s couch like it might not be open for him tomorrow—because maybe it won’t be. It doesn’t seem like the right thing to bring up now, when Shades is looking at him like he clearly expects Che to be pleased.

He is pleased, in the way he always is when Shades does things that are obviously designed to please him. Shades used to bring him shit when they were kids, candy bars and bags of chips that he’d steal from the bodegas, like he ever really needed to work for Che’s friendship. Maybe he thought he did.

At any rate, it’s not like they both haven’t been coveting guns of their own for years. Che gives him a slow grin. “You ain’t gonna let me hold it? It is my birthday.”

Shades does let him hold it, then he tucks it back into his waistband and they dig into the food. Che has to go back upstairs and get them some cups of soda so they don’t have to drink straight tequila with the meal, but he doesn’t complain. By the time they’ve worked their way through an order of egg rolls, house lo mein, sweet and sour chicken, and fried rice, they’re both full, hot, and slightly nauseous, or at least Che is, but it’s nothing too bad. Not bad at all.

Shades has always had a sort of catlike manner, light on his feet and hard to please, but tipsy and fed he’s even more so, dozy and lounging back on the stairs like he could fall asleep where he sits. Che can only assume that if he’s feeling it—a warmth in his limbs and a vague sourness in his mouth—then Shades must be, too. The sun begins to set, and Shades says something about going to the corner. On a hot Saturday night like this, they won’t have to look far for something to do, but neither one of them moves yet. Even though they’re just in the small, patchy lot behind his building, Che feels like he’s sitting in the middle of something big, somewhere at the corner of Shades, his brother, and Shades, something else. It feels like it should scare him, that feeling, and it does, but not badly enough to make him run from it.

He’s pulled from his thoughts, abstract as they are, when Shades exhales and reaches up to take off his glasses. He pockets them, then glances over at Che, perhaps noticing the scrutiny on him. “What?” he says, in response to Che’s raised eyebrows. “It gets old sometimes, not being able to see shit.” A beat, and then, “Besides, s’just you here.”

“Just us, B,” Che agrees. Shades can still be Shades without the glasses, but it’s when his expression changes that Che always knows something has shifted; he looks relaxed now, satisfied, as he tilts his head back slightly to look up at the graying brick of the neighboring building. He doesn’t look like that when he’s out on the streets, only when they’re alone in Che’s room, or splashing around in a place where nobody knows them, or when they’re here. Che wonders if he looks the same way sometimes, open and easy like that, and if Shades sees it and knows it for what it really is.

“Thought you wanted to go to the corner?” Che asks when Shades doesn’t move to get up after a few minutes.

“It’s still early,” Shades says. He sits up slightly then, turning his head toward Che. “Let me see your arm.”

Che blinks in surprise but complies, hiking his sleeve up slightly as Shades reaches out with one hand. Shades’s fingers are warm, his grip a little too light, almost tickling the skin where he touches Che’s arm to maneuver it. He looks down at Che’s arm in the orange light from the bulb above the back door of the building. To Che’s surprise, the flesh is healing up pretty well, although there will definitely be a scar; still, it’s more dumb luck. “I keep telling you to show it off,” Shades says, without looking up. “Could have bitches in the palm of your hand with a war wound, you know?”

Shades’s tone is absentminded enough that Che doesn’t feel the need to respond to this. They’ve gone over the details of that night at length, even though they don't run deep enough with that crew to be included, but somehow they’ve avoided talking about what happened after or what could have happened instead. Che knows, though, that Shades has thought about it since; his expression grows thoughtful sometimes, his brow furrowed, when he looks at Che. He’s thinking of it now.

As Che watches Shades examine him for a few seconds longer than necessary, then even longer, he has the strangest urge to lift his hand and clasp the side of Shades’s face, to run the tips of his fingers over Shades’s ear, to pull him in close.

“We’re gonna die together,” Shades says, finally letting his hand drop, fingers skimming over the inside of Che’s elbow before falling away. “You know that, right.”

Che scoffs. “Goddamn,” he says, startled enough to be almost amused. “What’s got you all doom and gloom?”

“I’m not,” Shades says. He leans back on his elbows again, casual. “Just stating a fact. Cops or a rival gang, that’s the only way a gangster goes out.”

Che laughs, though under other circumstances he’d be inclined to agree. Under other circumstances, he’s a realist, but now he still feels infinite, like he's got something in his grasp that has eluded him for a long time. “Rivals? We ain’t got none of them, baby.”

Shades laughs, too, reaches out and pushes at Che’s thigh like he’s being stupid, and when Che catches at his hand instinctively he just laughs again, then lets the touch fall away easy.

* * *

Less than a week before school starts back, Che’s out around noon, summer school having mercifully ended and given him back his mornings for at least a few days. Shades is always up earlier than Che is; he stays out late and wakes up early, maybe just so he’s hard to pin down. Che heads to the corner, as is their general routine, but Shades isn’t there. A dude named AJ is, though; he’s a few years older than they are, but his expression alights in recognition as Che approaches.

“Shit,” he says, conversationally. “I heard about Shades, man.”

Che stops. “Heard what about Shades?” he asks. His voice comes out strangely normal even as something slimy and cold slides down his back.

AJ relates what he’s heard, which is that Shades was out early this morning and got picked up with a stolen weapon on him. AJ doesn’t know what Shades was doing or where he was going, only assumes he must’ve been hustling something. He looks to Che for this information, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Nah,” Che says automatically, sort of dumbfounded, “we don’t—”

The words get caught in his mouth. _We don’t hustle without each other_. It’s not that it’s untrue, because they don’t; they don’t do anything without each other. Che hasn’t been alone since before he knew what loneliness was, or that he’d ever even been lonely. He hasn’t been without Shades in so long that he doesn’t understand what grips him then, the tightness in his chest that makes his breath go useless and gasping.

He walks home, pulling a breath in with each step and pushing it back out with the next, and stays in his room till his mother comes in around dinnertime. He paces a lot, but she finds him on his bed. She asks him what happened, so he tells her, and even though she puts her arms around him like he’s a baby he doesn’t cry, just keeps trying to breathe.

He doesn’t hear from Shades in the coming days and he doesn’t really expect to; Shades wouldn’t consider news of his wellbeing to be worth the price of a collect call. School starts back and it’s like sitting in the feeling of not breathing for seven hours a day. Panic turns to fear turns to a dull roar. He has to have weekly meetings with a guidance counselor after all the skipping they did the year before, and if this were an afterschool special she’d ask him how he feels about Shades being gone, but she doesn’t, just fills out a form and sends him on his way.

His mother doesn’t know what to do but fret, so he stays in his room when she’s gone and sits out behind the building when she’s home. He keeps this up for a solid month until he comes inside for dinner and finds an envelope sitting on the kitchen table.

Even if his mother hadn’t left it sitting on his place mat, Che would know it was for him instantly: Shades’s dark, block print sticks out against the white of the envelope from across the room, as does the official-looking ink stamp in the upper righthand corner. The stamp reminds him of the letters that used to come when he was a kid, while his dad was locked up, but this doesn’t feel anything like that had. This doesn’t make him feel happy so much as—dizzy.

He has the presence of mind to carry the envelope to his bedroom, but even once he’s safely there he can barely read it, his heart pounding too hard for him to focus on anything for long. Shades doesn’t say much; the letter is barely a page long. He asks about school, which Che finds dimly amusing, although really only to talk about how bored Che must be with it. He doesn’t say how he got a hold of stamps, if it was legitimate or not; he doesn’t complain much, and he doesn’t explain what happened that morning in August, knowing as Che does that someone will have read behind him. He does say that everything Che’s heard about the inside is true, _except no weird shit. Not so far at least_. Che thinks that last part was supposed to be funny, in the dry sort of way Shades can be, and maybe under other circumstances he’d laugh.    

 _Hold it down on the block. And write me back,_ Shades says at the end, the only earnest part of the whole thing, _so I don’t go crazy._

He’s scribbled _Shades_ at the bottom of the page, although the envelope says _Hernan Alvarez_ in print. Che gets stuck on the letters of his signature, the clear _S_ and _h_ and the scrawled line making up the rest of it, until his vision blurs over. If he finally cries then, with some dizzying mixture of leftover hurt and relief, nobody’s around to see it, not even Shades.

He carries the letter around for days after, even though it feels like one of those things he shouldn’t do, one of those things that’s sort of scary for the feeling it represents. He leaves it sitting on the windowsill at night, where he can see it gleaming white in the moonlight when it’s too hot to sleep. It takes him a day or so to be calm enough to read the whole thing in one go, and another day before he can start to come up with a response.

There’s infinite things he could say—what a dumbass Shades is for toting around that piece, how unfair this shit is. How scared he is, even more scared now that he knows exactly where Shades is. There’s other things, too, like how much he misses Shades, how he feels like he’s missing a lung or something and still has to go to school and the corner and everywhere else, how much he loves Shades, in that scary, too-big way. The scariest thing about it is that the only thing that really stops him, at least in those moments, is the knowledge that somebody else might read it, that the letter might never make it to Shades for a variety of reasons, and that he will have spilled himself open for anybody other than the only person he can trust.

In the end, he writes about how the guidance counselor is practically up his ass at school; how the girls they’ve been sweating for years asked him about Shades just the other day; he tells Shades to be safe. It’s all he can do for now, and it’s what Shades needs: to know that somebody’s thinking of him, waiting for him, as the weather turns and it gets colder and darker where he is, just as it will in Che’s bedroom with the poorly-sealed window.

The fall will be filled with letters; Che knows this like he knows Shades—better than he knows himself, most times. Together or not, he’s with Shades as Shades is with him: always. 


End file.
